Tuesday, December 30, 2008

In today's The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss takes Barack Obama to task for not stepping up and doing more to address the renewed violence between Hamas and Israel. I'm going to pass on commenting on his assessment of the actual situation in the Middle East (the virulent comments left by other readers at the end of the article flog the topic to death) but I am not entirely sure why Obama is seen as shirking his responsibilities here. After all, he technically has absolutely no authority.

Unfortunately, George "Vanishing Act" Bush isn't doing much himself so there's a power vacuum unless something is going on through the State Department that we don't know about yet. However, unless someone wants to change the rules and move up the Inauguration date, Obama a) can't actually do anything until January 20th and b) runs the risk of offering mixed messages if he says something that is contradictory to the current State Department efforts.

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Our Lives in the Marsh

“A marsh is one of the most receptive environments on earth. It is always open to the sky and all the winds and weather that flow in and recede like the tides in endlessly recurring motion. In its own, self-generating body it accommodates innumerable forms of life all responding to that common sea.

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Other Blogs from My Deep Dark Past

Before kicking off "Walks in the Marsh," my first experience with writing blogs actually came as a result of my job. Rather than a single company blog, I experimented with event-specific blogs to provide a near-real time look at what was going on when I went out on the road: